Why Avril Lavigne has the most absurd superfans in pop?
Feb 15, 2019 7:01:08 GMT
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Post by Gabo on Feb 15, 2019 7:01:08 GMT
Avril Lavigne has two kinds of fans. The fans that stopped listening to her after Girlfriend, the chart-topping single of her third, 2007 album The Best Damn Thing, and the fans that found her at Girlfriend.
The former, the purists, believe she sold out. Some of them, who have spent the last 12 years knee-deep in Reddit conspiracy theory threads, even think Avril died and was replaced by a doppelganger.
The others, now in their mid 20s and eagerly awaiting Avril's first new album in six years (Head Above Water), are a rare breed. Together, they form one of the most curious fan bases of any mainstream musician of the last two decades.
But then again, Avril is a curious star.
Original fans grew up on moody, punk Avril, whose only accessory was a school tie around her neck, her mouse brown hair like curtains across bright blue eyes that swam in layers of smudged kohl, her nails black and chipped.
Tenacious, rebellious, but ultimately (by her own admission) not a real punk, Avril, discovered at 15 singing country songs in a bookshop in Canada’s rural Napanee, appealed by way of alternative accessibility. She had an edge (and once kicked a girl in a bar for calling her a poseur), but parents would still wrap up her albums for Christmas.
With her Grammy nominated-debut album Let Go in 2002, which sold 40 million records worldwide, followed by a number one charting sophomore album Under My Skin in 2004, Avril united rival superfans of Panic at the Disco and Fall Out Boy; satisfied the musically uneducated lamely wielding Walkmans and the sound snobs flaunting tiny MP3s; spoke to both emos and preps; rock chicks and skater boys.
Yet with The Best Damn Thing, 23-year-old Avril’s music began to mutate. As did her appearance. Her poker-straight-hair, bleached peroxide a couple of years before, was suddenly worn in loose, soft princess curls. Her black jeans and T Shirt were swapped for heels and poofy, strapless dresses. Her makeup, no longer a scribbled afterthought, became a “look”.
While the album was a commercial success, the sound divided opinion. It was her first album for new label RCA, co-written and produced by Swedish pop maestro Doctor Luke, and, to borrow teen Avril terminology, it sucked.
While some songs, such as Everything Back From You, were reassuringly Avril, playfully amping up the puerile teen angst with lyrics like “today was the worst day; I went through hell” against quirky, carefree choruses, others were unrecognisably cheesy. I Don’t Have To Try’s banal song-rap was reminiscent of a teen band performing at their school prom.
The album single Girlfriend, shouty, sugary and delivered Hey Mickey-style, sounded almost sacrilegious to listeners whose souls had fed off Lavigne’s trademark melancholia, her delicate voice almost breaking over lyrics of heartbreak before working itself into self-assured rage for the chorus; each song a personal motivational anthem, each melody sticking with you for years. But Girlfriend just felt like chart fodder. In fact it became Avril Lavigne's first, and only song to make the US charts.
While many fans welcomed Avril’s new mood – of course artists should be free to evolve, musically and personally – others were nonplussed. In fact, they couldn’t believe it was the same person. She was wearing pink, for God’s sake! The corners of her eyes looked different. Her smile was off. Her pitch was higher. In one video, Hello Kitty, a playful yet controversial ode to the Japanese cartoon, fans expressed their disbelief in the comments. “Is this really Avril?”
Two more albums followed: Goodbye Lullaby in 2011 and Avril Lavigne in 2013. Both lagged in the charts, only making top 10 in 12 countries. Avril Lavigne received the lowest first week sales of her career: 44,000 copies. Critics felt Avril’s rebelliousness, with songs like Here’s To Never Growing Up – delivered in her new blend of banal, cheery pop-rock – was laboured. After all, she was a 26 year old woman. How necessary is rebellion when you’re an adult?
Then along came the conspiracy theorists. Originating on a blog site in Brazil called Avril Esta Morta (Avril is Dead) a theory was spawned that Avril had died and been replaced by a lookalike actress named Melissa Vendella. It went viral (thanks to a Buzzfeed journalist who picked up on the story) and transmuted.
Depending on which dark corner of the internet you passed through, Avril had died in a snowboarding accident, had taken her own life after her grandfather died in 2003, or, having simply been unable to cope with fame, begun to use a body double in certain situations. But then she had died, and the doppelganger (hired by the label) continued her work to distract the paparazzi.
The Brazilian blogger later admitted the post was a hoax. She wanted to make a point about how conspiracy theories spread like wildfire. About how the internet would believe anything. Melissa Vandella is a made up name. But it was too late: the theory took on a life of its own, fuelled by the fact Avril had gone quiet. She was absent on social media, wasn’t producing any music, and her name only made headlines for, almost unbelievably, charging Brazilian fans up to $400 each to take a photo with her in 2014. Fans blamed Melissa.
Eventually in an exclusive 2015 interview with People Magazine, Avril, freshly divorced from Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger – her second marriage, following her fleeting union with Deryck Whibley of Sum4 at and 21 – revealed she’d spent the last two years in bed battling Lyme disease. The illness is spread by ticks and attacks your immune system, causing chronic fatigue. In the interview, Avril said she’d almost died. For some fans, this was more than coincidence.
Four years later, and Avril is finally releasing her first album in seven years: Head Above Water. Last month, she released a statement, which has done nothing to quiet the twittering Reddit threads sharing fresh hypotheses by the day, explaining that the music was a reflection on her illness. “One night, I thought I was dying, and I had accepted that I was going to die,” she wrote. “My mom laid with me in bed and held me. I felt like I was drowning…In that moment, the songwriting of this album began...This album tells my story.”
But who wants to hear this story? Who are the Avril Lavigne "Stans" of 2019? The very idea of an Avril Lavigne superfan seems absurd. Picture it: a 26-year-old, done with their city job at 7pm, sitting on the bus with their earbuds in, mouthing Complicated’s “Chill out, it’s all been done before” as they look pensively out of the window, metaphorical black tears rolling down their cheeks as they sit on their hands to stop the compulsion to strum an air guitar.
And yet, they exist. On Avril’s Instagram, where she is followed by 21 million people, comments fizz with excitement at the new album, with followers signing off as “Little Black Stars” in reference to Avril’s song Black Star and her various star tattoos. Most of these fans are European or South American, and in their mid twenties.
Danny, a 29-year-old advertising designer from Costa Rica, and Luca, a 30-year-old hairdresser from Italy, both discovered Avril in 2002, age 12 and 9 respectively. “I loved her carefree, rebellious teenager attitude,” Dan tells me over email. “Avril was the anti-fashion girl to the pop singers at the time. That’s what I fell in love with.” Danny has listened to Avril every day since, and, despite enjoying other indie music, has not found another artist on her level. Kamila, on the other hand, admits she only listens to her new music out of habit, alongside Taylor Swift, Maroon 5, Green Day and The Killers. A 25-year-old radio journalist from Moscow, she first discovered Avril in 2004. “She has changed, but I’ll listen to her anyway. Her fanbase changed a lot in 2007. Many didn’t like the new transformation.”
Danny has no problem with it. “She has matured as an artist and as a woman with each album, but she maintains her sound’s youthful essence,” he says. “With Head Above Water, Avril wanted her voice to be the main instrument. The maturity in her lyrics captivated me instantly.” Did he ever buy into the “Melissa” rumours? “Absolutely not. It isn’t logical. She has physically changed, as anyone would in 17 years. She’s no longer a girl; she’s a woman. People who make fun about these rumors are people who do not accept that we all change and mature with the passage of time or who believe that an artist must remain stuck in a musical style.” Would he count himself as a “stan?” “Absolutely, although it’s clear she no longer has the number of fans she once had.”
It’s particularly clear from the Spotify statistics. While Complicated has 207 million streams, Girlfriend has less than half. Her two new album singles – both ballads – Head Above Water and Tell Me It’s Over have just 62 million and six million respectively. Her monthly listens tally close to ten million (mostly from Sao Palo and Mexico City). It’s only two million less than Britney Spears, but then again, in 2019, you’re more likely to come across a Britney meme, or a line about her 2007 meltdown on a mug in the office, than one of her songs.
Avril’s third single from the album, Dumb Blonde, was released Tuesday and, in a collaboration surely no fan saw coming, features Nicki Minaj. The song is closer to “old Avril” than both her new singles, its poppy song rap and catchy melody heavily reminiscent of Girlfriend (admittedly still a departure from her original sound).
Listen to the lyrics – simple, playful, defiant – and at times, you can picture the singer in her heyday, her baseball cap turned sideways, wheeling up on her bike through the mall, that red and black school tie slung loosely around her neck. Nostalgia briefly sweetens the moment, and then we cringe. We put the moment back in the box, where it belongs.
It's Avril Lavigne very own Catch 22: fans never wanted Avril to grow up, and yet, they outgrew her long ago
www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artists/complicated-avril-lavigne-has-absurd-superfans-pop/
The former, the purists, believe she sold out. Some of them, who have spent the last 12 years knee-deep in Reddit conspiracy theory threads, even think Avril died and was replaced by a doppelganger.
The others, now in their mid 20s and eagerly awaiting Avril's first new album in six years (Head Above Water), are a rare breed. Together, they form one of the most curious fan bases of any mainstream musician of the last two decades.
But then again, Avril is a curious star.
Original fans grew up on moody, punk Avril, whose only accessory was a school tie around her neck, her mouse brown hair like curtains across bright blue eyes that swam in layers of smudged kohl, her nails black and chipped.
Tenacious, rebellious, but ultimately (by her own admission) not a real punk, Avril, discovered at 15 singing country songs in a bookshop in Canada’s rural Napanee, appealed by way of alternative accessibility. She had an edge (and once kicked a girl in a bar for calling her a poseur), but parents would still wrap up her albums for Christmas.
With her Grammy nominated-debut album Let Go in 2002, which sold 40 million records worldwide, followed by a number one charting sophomore album Under My Skin in 2004, Avril united rival superfans of Panic at the Disco and Fall Out Boy; satisfied the musically uneducated lamely wielding Walkmans and the sound snobs flaunting tiny MP3s; spoke to both emos and preps; rock chicks and skater boys.
Yet with The Best Damn Thing, 23-year-old Avril’s music began to mutate. As did her appearance. Her poker-straight-hair, bleached peroxide a couple of years before, was suddenly worn in loose, soft princess curls. Her black jeans and T Shirt were swapped for heels and poofy, strapless dresses. Her makeup, no longer a scribbled afterthought, became a “look”.
While the album was a commercial success, the sound divided opinion. It was her first album for new label RCA, co-written and produced by Swedish pop maestro Doctor Luke, and, to borrow teen Avril terminology, it sucked.
While some songs, such as Everything Back From You, were reassuringly Avril, playfully amping up the puerile teen angst with lyrics like “today was the worst day; I went through hell” against quirky, carefree choruses, others were unrecognisably cheesy. I Don’t Have To Try’s banal song-rap was reminiscent of a teen band performing at their school prom.
The album single Girlfriend, shouty, sugary and delivered Hey Mickey-style, sounded almost sacrilegious to listeners whose souls had fed off Lavigne’s trademark melancholia, her delicate voice almost breaking over lyrics of heartbreak before working itself into self-assured rage for the chorus; each song a personal motivational anthem, each melody sticking with you for years. But Girlfriend just felt like chart fodder. In fact it became Avril Lavigne's first, and only song to make the US charts.
While many fans welcomed Avril’s new mood – of course artists should be free to evolve, musically and personally – others were nonplussed. In fact, they couldn’t believe it was the same person. She was wearing pink, for God’s sake! The corners of her eyes looked different. Her smile was off. Her pitch was higher. In one video, Hello Kitty, a playful yet controversial ode to the Japanese cartoon, fans expressed their disbelief in the comments. “Is this really Avril?”
Two more albums followed: Goodbye Lullaby in 2011 and Avril Lavigne in 2013. Both lagged in the charts, only making top 10 in 12 countries. Avril Lavigne received the lowest first week sales of her career: 44,000 copies. Critics felt Avril’s rebelliousness, with songs like Here’s To Never Growing Up – delivered in her new blend of banal, cheery pop-rock – was laboured. After all, she was a 26 year old woman. How necessary is rebellion when you’re an adult?
Then along came the conspiracy theorists. Originating on a blog site in Brazil called Avril Esta Morta (Avril is Dead) a theory was spawned that Avril had died and been replaced by a lookalike actress named Melissa Vendella. It went viral (thanks to a Buzzfeed journalist who picked up on the story) and transmuted.
Depending on which dark corner of the internet you passed through, Avril had died in a snowboarding accident, had taken her own life after her grandfather died in 2003, or, having simply been unable to cope with fame, begun to use a body double in certain situations. But then she had died, and the doppelganger (hired by the label) continued her work to distract the paparazzi.
The Brazilian blogger later admitted the post was a hoax. She wanted to make a point about how conspiracy theories spread like wildfire. About how the internet would believe anything. Melissa Vandella is a made up name. But it was too late: the theory took on a life of its own, fuelled by the fact Avril had gone quiet. She was absent on social media, wasn’t producing any music, and her name only made headlines for, almost unbelievably, charging Brazilian fans up to $400 each to take a photo with her in 2014. Fans blamed Melissa.
Eventually in an exclusive 2015 interview with People Magazine, Avril, freshly divorced from Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger – her second marriage, following her fleeting union with Deryck Whibley of Sum4 at and 21 – revealed she’d spent the last two years in bed battling Lyme disease. The illness is spread by ticks and attacks your immune system, causing chronic fatigue. In the interview, Avril said she’d almost died. For some fans, this was more than coincidence.
Four years later, and Avril is finally releasing her first album in seven years: Head Above Water. Last month, she released a statement, which has done nothing to quiet the twittering Reddit threads sharing fresh hypotheses by the day, explaining that the music was a reflection on her illness. “One night, I thought I was dying, and I had accepted that I was going to die,” she wrote. “My mom laid with me in bed and held me. I felt like I was drowning…In that moment, the songwriting of this album began...This album tells my story.”
But who wants to hear this story? Who are the Avril Lavigne "Stans" of 2019? The very idea of an Avril Lavigne superfan seems absurd. Picture it: a 26-year-old, done with their city job at 7pm, sitting on the bus with their earbuds in, mouthing Complicated’s “Chill out, it’s all been done before” as they look pensively out of the window, metaphorical black tears rolling down their cheeks as they sit on their hands to stop the compulsion to strum an air guitar.
And yet, they exist. On Avril’s Instagram, where she is followed by 21 million people, comments fizz with excitement at the new album, with followers signing off as “Little Black Stars” in reference to Avril’s song Black Star and her various star tattoos. Most of these fans are European or South American, and in their mid twenties.
Danny, a 29-year-old advertising designer from Costa Rica, and Luca, a 30-year-old hairdresser from Italy, both discovered Avril in 2002, age 12 and 9 respectively. “I loved her carefree, rebellious teenager attitude,” Dan tells me over email. “Avril was the anti-fashion girl to the pop singers at the time. That’s what I fell in love with.” Danny has listened to Avril every day since, and, despite enjoying other indie music, has not found another artist on her level. Kamila, on the other hand, admits she only listens to her new music out of habit, alongside Taylor Swift, Maroon 5, Green Day and The Killers. A 25-year-old radio journalist from Moscow, she first discovered Avril in 2004. “She has changed, but I’ll listen to her anyway. Her fanbase changed a lot in 2007. Many didn’t like the new transformation.”
Danny has no problem with it. “She has matured as an artist and as a woman with each album, but she maintains her sound’s youthful essence,” he says. “With Head Above Water, Avril wanted her voice to be the main instrument. The maturity in her lyrics captivated me instantly.” Did he ever buy into the “Melissa” rumours? “Absolutely not. It isn’t logical. She has physically changed, as anyone would in 17 years. She’s no longer a girl; she’s a woman. People who make fun about these rumors are people who do not accept that we all change and mature with the passage of time or who believe that an artist must remain stuck in a musical style.” Would he count himself as a “stan?” “Absolutely, although it’s clear she no longer has the number of fans she once had.”
It’s particularly clear from the Spotify statistics. While Complicated has 207 million streams, Girlfriend has less than half. Her two new album singles – both ballads – Head Above Water and Tell Me It’s Over have just 62 million and six million respectively. Her monthly listens tally close to ten million (mostly from Sao Palo and Mexico City). It’s only two million less than Britney Spears, but then again, in 2019, you’re more likely to come across a Britney meme, or a line about her 2007 meltdown on a mug in the office, than one of her songs.
Avril’s third single from the album, Dumb Blonde, was released Tuesday and, in a collaboration surely no fan saw coming, features Nicki Minaj. The song is closer to “old Avril” than both her new singles, its poppy song rap and catchy melody heavily reminiscent of Girlfriend (admittedly still a departure from her original sound).
Listen to the lyrics – simple, playful, defiant – and at times, you can picture the singer in her heyday, her baseball cap turned sideways, wheeling up on her bike through the mall, that red and black school tie slung loosely around her neck. Nostalgia briefly sweetens the moment, and then we cringe. We put the moment back in the box, where it belongs.
It's Avril Lavigne very own Catch 22: fans never wanted Avril to grow up, and yet, they outgrew her long ago
www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artists/complicated-avril-lavigne-has-absurd-superfans-pop/
